The Bonehunters

The corporal straightened, then spat over the side. 'Aren't we all?'



Chapter Twenty-Three



The Twins stood on their tower as the slaughter began below and the knuckles bouncing wild to their delight, now turned sudden sudden and sour and this game they played – the mortals bleeding and crying in the dark – they saw it turn and the game they played tossed to a new wind, a gale not their own – and so the Twins were played, oh how they were played.



Slayer's Moon



Vatan Urot Within sight of Rampart Way – the stairs leading up to Mock's Hold – Kalam Mekhar glanced behind them yet again. Furtive crowds were closing in, moving one and all, it seemed, back towards the harbourfront. Who was behind all of this? What possible reason could there be?



The Fourteenth would not be dragged down into slaughter. In fact, the only realistic outcome was the very opposite. Hundreds of citizens could well die tonight, before the rest broke and fled. True, there were but a handful of marines at the jetty, but, Kalam well knew, they had Moranth munitions. And then, of course, there was Quick Ben.



Just don't use yourself up, friend. I think… The assassin reached beneath the folds of his cloak, reassured himself once again that he still carried the acorn the High Mage had prepared for him. My shaved knuckle in the hole. If it came to it, he could summon Quick. And I'm thinking…



The Adjunct did not hesitate, beginning her ascent of Rampart Way. The others followed.



A long climb ahead, a tiring one, rows upon rows of steps that had seen more than their share of spilled blood. Kalam had few pleasant memories of Rampart Way. She's up there, and so it flows down, ever down. They were above the level of the Upper Estates now, passing through a roiling updraught of mists bitter with woodsmoke.



Condensation clung to the stone wall on their left, as if the promontory itself had begun to sweat.



There was torchlight weaving through the streets below. City Watch alarms sounded here and there, and suddenly an estate was in flames, black smoke rising, eerily lit from beneath. Faint screams reached them.



And they climbed without pause, not a single word shared among them.



Naught but the muted clunk and rustle of armour, the scrape of boots, heavier breaths drawn with each step. The blurred moon emerged to throw a sickly light upon the city below and the bay, illuminating Old Lookout Island at the very outside edge of the harbour, the silvery reeds of Mud Island and, further south, opposite the mouth of Redcave River, Worm Island, where stood the ruins of a long abandoned temple of D'rek. The clear water this side of Mud Island was crowded with the transports, while Nok's escorts were positioned between those transports and the four Quon dromons of Empress Laseen's entourage, the latter still moored alongside the Imperial Docks directly beneath Mock's Hold.



The world suddenly seemed etched small to Kalam's eyes, an elaborate arrangement of some child's toys. If not for the masses of torchlight closing in on the Centre Docks, the faintly seen running figures in various streets and avenues, and the distant cries of a city convulsing upon itself, the panorama would look almost picturesque.



Was he seeing the Malazan Empire's death-throes? On the island where it began, so too, perhaps, would its fall be announced, here, this night, in a chaotic, senseless maelstrom of violence. The Adjunct crushed the rebellion in Seven Cities. This should be a triumphal return. Laseen, what have you done? Is this mad beast now broken free of your control?



Civilization's veil was so very thin, he well knew. Casting it aside required little effort, and even less instigation. There were enough thugs in the world – and those thugs could well be wearing the raiment of a noble, or a Fist, or indeed a priest's robes or a scholar's vestments – enough of them, without question, who lusted for chaos and the opportunities it provided. For senseless cruelty, for the unleashing of hatred, for killing and rape. Any excuse would suffice, or even none at all.



Ahead of him, the Adjunct ascended without hesitation, as though she was climbing a scaffold, at peace with what the fates had decreed. Was he reading her true? Kalam did not know.



But the time was coming, very soon now, when he would need to decide.



And he hoped. He prayed. That the moment, when it arrived, would make his choice obvious, indeed, inevitable. Yet, a suspicion lurked that the choice would prove far harsher than he now dared admit.



Do I choose to live, or do I choose to die?



He looked down to his right, at those four ships directly below.



She brought a lot of people with her, didn't she?



****

Halfway to Raven Hill Park, Bottle drew up against a door, his heart pounding, sweat dripping from his face. Sorcery was roiling through every street. Mockra. Twisting the thoughts of the unsuspecting and the gullible, filling skulls with the hunger for violence. And lone figures making their way against the tide were victims in the waiting – he had been forced to take a roundabout route to this door, along narrow choking alleys, down beneath North Riverwalk, buried up to his ankles in the filthy mud of Malaz River, where insects rose in voracious swarms. But at last, he had arrived.